Traditionally, products such as music players, cameras, video recorders, video games, web browsers, Global Positioning System (GPS) locators/navigators, clocks, telephones, and messaging systems were enabled by different electronic devices. More recently, many features of these products have converged onto unitary mobile devices such as smartphones, e-readers, and tablet computers. As a result, software applications exploiting these features have been and continue to be designed for mobile devices. These applications are often capable of storing large amounts of potentially sensitive or private information on a mobile device and communicating with other devices or remote systems over public and/or unsecured networks, with or without the user's knowledge.
The number of software applications that can be downloaded to mobile devices from public “application stores” or “markets” has exploded in recent years. In particular, the amount of downloadable malware masquerading as legitimate applications is on the rise, and new forms of malware seem to appear every day. It can be extremely difficult for users to distinguish “benign” applications from those that have a malicious intent. Even if an application is not intended as malware, it may perform activities that would be considered objectionable by some users. For these and other reasons, mobile devices are increasingly vulnerable to security attacks and/or privacy breaches as a result of application downloads.